The photo printouts stared back at me—my face, pale and wearing the smallest of smiles, from four angles, next to multiple images of Boyd Biggs at various ages. Percentages and probability scores covered the analysis pages, all that technical jargon that had seemed so convincing.
What a waste. Of money I couldn't afford to spend, of hope I couldn't afford to lose, of time I'd never get back.
I flipped through the pages, skimming over the data. The methodology section. The comparison algorithms. The confidence intervals that turned out to be anything but confident.
Then I reached a page near the back that I didn't remember seeing before. Or maybe I had seen it and dismissed it as unimportant. A section labeled "Excluded Data."
My eyes scanned the text:
One submitted photograph of Subject B (Boyd Biggs) was excluded from final analysis due to parameter inconsistencies. See Appendix C for excluded materials.
I frowned and flipped to Appendix C.
There it was—a single photo, smaller than the others, reproduced on the page with a red "EXCLUDED" stamp across it. Boyd Biggs's high school senior portrait, the one Octavia had managed to dig up from some yearbook archive. He looked impossibly young, maybe seventeen or eighteen, his hair darker than in recent photos, his face less weathered by time and success.
The photo quality was decent. I puzzled over why the photo had been excluded. I scanned the information at the bottom of the page.
Excluded photo does not appear to be Subject B (Boyd Biggs).
I squinted. Clearly, that was a mistake.
Or was it?
December 9, Tuesday
chill filteringa process of cooling bourbon and passing it through filters to remove fatty acids and cloudiness
OCTAVIA'S OFFICEsmelled like expensive leather and vanilla candles. I sat in the plush visitor's chair, the facial DNA analysis folder spread across her desk between us. She'd pulled her laptop monitor closer, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she cross-referenced information.
"This report implies the senior portrait isn't Boyd Biggs." She glanced back to her screen. "I pulled this directly from the county high school archives. It's definitely labeled as Boyd Biggs."
"Could the school have made a mistake? Mixed up photos or mislabeled them?"
"I don't think so." Octavia zoomed in on the digital copy she'd saved. "This does look like Boyd. The resemblance is clear. But it's almost as if..." She trailed off, her expression shifting from confusion to intense focus.
"What?"
"The test results. They're essentially saying the person in this high school photo is different from the person in the recent photos of Boyd Biggs." She pulled up another window on her screen. "Which would be impossible unless—"
"Unless what?"
Octavia's fingers stilled on the keyboard. "Unless Boyd Biggs isn't who he says he is."
The words hung in the air between us, too absurd to be real.
"That's crazy," I said. "We met with him. Dylan is his son. He co-owns Goldenrod Distillery. You can't just fake an entire identity."
"No, but you could assume someone else's identity." Octavia was scrolling rapidly now, pulling up articles and records. "Wait. I remember something from when I was researching the Biggs family. Boyd had a younger brother."
"Okay..."
"James. James Biggs." Her voice took on the clipped efficiency she used when piecing together evidence. "But he was in Manchester prison when you were born." She clicked another few keys. "And he died a few days after he was released."
"That matches what Boyd told me. How did he die?"
She clicked more keys. "Drowning." Then she gasped. "But his body was never recovered."
My entire body tingled. "That has to mean something."
